


roadkill rules.

by thackeryisatop (orphan_account)



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26060338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/thackeryisatop
Summary: Burnt out former ballerina Brock heads towards the bright lights of Las Vegas; and hitches a ride with four drag queens, one of whom might just be the love of his life.[A Branjie Road Trip AU]Originally posted in March 2020, reposted with the intention of being completed (sooner than we think!)
Relationships: Brooke Lynn Hytes/Vanessa Vanjie Mateo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	roadkill rules.

**Author's Note:**

> A Branjie road trip AU inspired by AJ and the Queen, though nothing that happens in here really is from the show? It's more the premise of the RV "adventure"!
> 
> This story was originally posted under my original name porg_galore earlier thi syear and deleted because I didn't like having it there incomplete, but has now been reuploaded with the intention of being finished!
> 
> CW: gun mention; but this is chapter one!

Brock’s been on the road for the better part of the past month when he sees it.

A beat up brown and yellow mini RV, it’s beige side stripes chipping off in the dry Dallas heat. It’s parked right smack dab underneath a streetlight at the very edge of the Wal-Mart’s parking lot, it’s grimy windows shuttered with teal slats.

He hitches his backpack higher on his shoulders, and circles the bus, pleased when he finds it’s got no state plates, only a bright pink vanity plate screwed to the front bumper that reads “Queenz!”, a glittering crown laser-cut just above the Z. Brock has to chuckle just a little bit at that, running his fingers against the rust around the plate.

The door isn’t locked, and swings open with a shrieking creak that buries itself underneath the police sirens and evening revelry of the city around them. Brock squeezes himself inside, long limbs nearly knocking right into the kitchen counter, which is situated immediately behind the driver’s console. He pops his head up when he’s inside, pulling the door shut behind him, and finding himself eye-level with a bunk above the driver’s seat. The passenger seat is piled high with garbage bags, and two smaller backpacks rest on top of the empty bunk.

He pulls one down, bright red with a reflective silver stripe cut through the straps, and unzips it, dipping his hand inside to find a few t-shirts and pairs of underwear, which he litters across the floor after realizing that they’re all so impossibly small. It must have been a kid’s, Brock thinks to himself, running his thumb over the glittering font of the Metallica logo on a little gray t-shirt. He digs a little deeper, and strikes gold in the front pocket.

There’s a wallet that belongs to a Jose, even though Brock couldn’t look like him if he tried, he takes a driver’s license and a gym card, and thirty dollars all in ones. The license isn’t expired, and Brock thinks he can get a decent price for that- maybe use the gym membership to bum a couple showers.

Silently, with a now practiced, graceful ease, he moves his arms along the cabinets lining the walls, his fingers reaching for the flashlight he keeps clipped to his hip.

None of the cabinets are locked, but they’re almost all dishearteningly empty, except for a few cheap looking pairs of gemstone earrings, and two tubes of lipstick he finds in a drawer beside the stove. Shuffling through the narrow corridor inside the bus, he finds two more bunks, mattresses all musty and stripped of their sheets, and two more cabinets with heavy wood doors, converted into bunks with bedrolls and blankets piled high up against the wall.

He tests the door of the bottom bunk, and runs his hands over the the fabric of a pink and green blanket. It’s clearly used, but still usable- so he leaves it, kicking past a tiny bathroom housing a grey toilet and a dirty sink, lipstick letters on the mirror above it half wiped away.

Brock tried the faucets, entirely unsurprised that there’s no water, but the medicine cabinet behind the mirror yields a couple of tubes of mascara, and s bottle of Advil that’s not yet expired.

He sidles back up to the front of the where there’s a set of keys in the ignition, the bright pink of a budget motel keychain hanging from a thick ring of silver and gold metal, all pushed close together like teeth. The engine turns over once or twice, humming with the same breaths as a chain smoker.

He cuts the ignition off, as soon as one busted front headlight whirs to life, and the lights above the drivers console flicker on.

“ _Shit…_ ”, he mutters, hitching his backpack higher up his shoulders.

People leave their shit behind all the time, in excellent condition, no less. And a whole RV, would certainly make the rest of his journey easier. No more bumming rides from creepy truckers, or running around corners when moms in minivans pick him up and think they can touch him with their babies sleeping in the back. No more trading the things he’ll never be able to get back for a place to sleep.

He has four states left- Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, before he can land up in Las Vegas- where he knows the neon lights promise him a whole brand new life- the one advertised on the flyer for Coco Montrese’s Cabaret that he’d folded into the bottom of his backpack all the way back in New York. With the RV, it would be a two, three day journey at the very most.

By the weekend, Brock could be on stage again.

He could have an apartment by Monday.

Thoughts racing in his mind, he forces himself to sit down on a bench beside the kitchen counter, his eyes drifting back to the converted bunks.

He’ll stay here for the night, wait it out, see if anyone picks up the RV. He’s escaped out of impound lots before, and usually tow truck drivers are pretty understanding. Plenty of people have no money anymore, and they’re all just doing the very best they can, after all.

_Yes._

If he can stay here for the whole day, he’ll take it. He can buy plates from some seedy town on the way, and leave the RV in another parking lot, just like this one, in Nevada.

Brock pulls open the bunk door- and throws his backpack against the headboard, before folding himself in against the blinds. Someone has taped a picture of Rihanna to the ceiling, and Brock giggles, despite his situation, winking at RiRi as he rolls over on the bedroll, placing the backpack as a barrier between himself and the door, a subconscious practice he supposes he won’t need when he’s got a place to live again.

Just a few hours more to wait, and he’ll be well on his way.

* * *

“ _-C’mon, little sis-_ don’t leave your stuff all over the damn floor.”, Shangela sighs, kicking open the door of the RV to find Vanjie’s clothes littered over the cracking linoleum floor. Her arms are laden with gray bags stuffed with the things they had bought at the Walmart, their final stop before they would leave Dallas on their way to Vegas.

“ _The fuck-_ hey, I didn’t do that-“, Vanjie scrambles up the narrow stairs behind her, twirling the pink laces threaded through her wig. “- _bitch, this shirt’s my favorite too- fucking- Silky, you do this?”_

“Girl, why would I be- nah, bitch you left that thing open. It probably just fell off the bunk.”, Silky fills in, stepping behind her with Alyssa, who pulls two plastic suitcases behind her that are wheeled into the bathroom after she shuts the door behind them. The RV is tiny, cramped and rank, smelling of wetness and rust and metal, stains that cling to the wall equally likely to be blood or shit, or both.

For now, though- it was home, one that Alyssa had found in the Classified’s, and barely fit the four of them, Silky and Vanjie sharing two converted closet spaces while Shangela slept above the driver’s console, and Alyssa drove, Vanjie’s privileges revoked after she’s backed into a drive through sign that morning.

“Y’all ready?”, Alyssa asks, the last of their things now packed haphazardly into the bus at least, Silky already spread across the bench in the kitchen, her hand deep in a plastic container filled with Cheese Puffs.

Vanjie squeezes herself into the very edge of the passenger seat, her body half hidden behind plastic garbage bags, her chin resting in her palm as she looks up through the windshield, past the crushed up bug on one of the wipers, where she can see the moon, hanging high and hot in the black, starless sky.

“Hey bitch, she asked you a question.”, Silky tells her, gently cuffing the back of her head.

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m good.”, Vanjie repeats, just for herself to hear, pulling her knees up to her chin as she leans against the greying window glass.

“ _Let’s get the fuck outta Texas._ ”

-

They don’t have to pull over unless someone has to shit, so they stay on the highway, Alyssa drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, Vanjie with her phone in her hand though the reception is spotty and they haven’t had WiFi since they pulled out of the parking lot.

She’s tired of playing games in the highway stripe light, and opts for flicking through the albums in the Photos app instead, deleting a couple selfies, adding a heart to a photo of she and Silky drinking from elaborate beer funnels, a life that gets further and further away as the miles tick up on Alyssa’s console.

“You gonna tell me what happened?”, Alyssa asks, gently as she can, putting the bus on cruise control so it almost feels like they’re floating through the barren prairies.

“You wanted a dancer and- Silks comes with me, you know that. We gonna do some travelling, some gambling, some hood rat shit.”, Vanjie repeats her answer, staring straight ahead to the very last pinprick of light at the end of the highway.

“Shangie asked you to LA last year… and you didn’t want anything to do with us. What changed? That’s all I’m asking.”

Alyssa’s hand reaches over, resting on the top of Vanjie’s thigh, like she cares at all what happens to her.

“Wasn’t _nothing_. I got- last year, I hurt my knee real bad, remember? I was just… dealing with all that shit and the bills.”

“How is that?”

“Fine. I just have to be a little more careful-“

Vanjie feels like she’s being painted into a corner, Alyssa’s gaze drifting to the side mirror, where she adjusts one of her eyelashes.

“You sure I’m not gonna have any problems?”

“You know how to hold your liquor right?”, Vanjie jokes, but it’s bitter and deep, cutting through her throat.

“I do, Miss Vanjie, I do.”

* * *

Alyssa frees her from the console to switch with Shangela, who squeezes into the passenger seat with a book that looks right out of Harry Potter in her hands.

“Atlas Obscura. Forty percent off.”, she explains, flipping open the front cover. “Got all kinds a’ weird places for the once in a lifetime experience.”

“More once in a lifetime than four drag queens on their way to the city of sin?”, Alyssa laughs, flicking their front headlights on and off on the empty stretch of road before them.

“We are a touring enterprise, baby!”

Vanjie cracks a tiny grin, escaping to the back of the bus where Silky is already sitting up in her bunk, an old catalog open in her lap.

“These 90s bitches really knew how to turn it.”, she sighs out, pushing her glasses up a little higher on her nose.

“Shit, where’d you even find that?”

“Under this here bed. This bus probably haunted or some shit if Miss Alyssa up there didn’t lie about the price.”, says Silky, opening the door of her closet bunk up all the way as Vanjie eagerly scrambles in.

“You survive interrogation?”, she whispers, allow and conspiratorial. “Shangie was tryin’ me- but you best believe I kept my lips zipped, mama.”

“ _Holy shit._ ”

It’s relief, the feeling that settles in Vanjie’s middle, that rushes out of her lungs as she lets her head fall back to rest on the closet’s plastic walls.

“Ride or die, right?”, says Silky, reaching out a hand so she and Vanjie can meet in a sticky high five.

“ _Ride or motherfucking die._ ”

They fall quiet for a few more moments, before Vanjie speaks again.

“When we got reception again, I’ll call up my mom. She lives in LA and don’t give a fuck, she’s probably just gonna be happy to see me. We gonna do these gigs and get some money, and then we go there. How about that?”

“You takin’ my fat ass to Vegas and LA? You sure this isn’t just some weirdass long proposal? ‘Cause I do need a man, but not bad enough for your thirsty ass.”

“Bitch!”

She waits for Silky to start to laugh, before adding;

“But you know, if my Mom kicks me out, we can totally get married.”

-

They shoot the shit for what must be maybe an hour or so, Alyssa stopping in the middle of a tiny, near abandoned town to gas up, practically sprinting back to the bus when she goes inside the station to pay, but there’s no one at the till, even though the lights are on and the meter is running, pipes flowing to the pump and a quiet, cool wind blowing through the empty lot.

“Bitch, if you done brought back a demon-“, Shangela whistles, once they’re well away from the station’s blown out neon sign, and Vanjie’s heartbeat has calmed enough that she knows it’s only Silky, wiggling her fingers in the corners of her eyes- and not something from the other side.

“We just get Big Silk back there to exorcise my ass then.”

“Nu-uh! I ain’t touching _no_ Satan shit! Y’all rebuke that by your damn self!”

Vanjie can feel herself growing sleepy, as the very barest of pink rays of sunshine start to poke up through the impossibly distant horizon line. Silky fades off just as she’s tossing her wig on to the top bunk, a graveyard for their stuff that Vanjie knows Shangela will force her to clean in the morning.

Their little closet bunks actually aren’t that uncomfortable, and Vanjie’s been surprised at how warm hers it, and how relatively little it smells in comparison to everything else. She’d sprayed it down with perfume, but it didn’t feel much worse than a summer camp bed at all, the blankets she’d taken from home more than soft and warm enough to make her forget what a shitshow they were speeding towards.

_Or away from._

The point was to get far _away_ from the shitshow, right?, she reminded herself, checking her reflection in the dull steel pipes that hung from the sides of the bus. Her hair was getting too long, but the liquid eyeliner Alyssa had promised her was absolute magic was still sharply painted on above her eyes, and she’d decided she would leave it on- less work to do in the morning.

Vanjie crouches to unlock the outside closet door, more than ready to jump into her bed for the night, her hand hitting something unexpected as she fishes inside to turn on the little reading lamp she’d been using as a light.

It’s… coarse, hard-packed, and she realizes when her fingers brush past a buckle, that it must be one of their backpacks, piled into her space- because they must be running out of room. Rolling her eyes, Vanjie pulls the backpack down and aside, and easily finds the switch of her lamp as she throws the rest of the door open.

Light floods into the tiny corner, and she screams and screams and screams.

* * *

“- _sis, when I tell you Lady Gaga was the ultimate-“_

Shangela is cut off by a strangled yelp from the back of the bus, Alyssa only shaking her head when Vanjie keeps screaming.

“Silky probably put a spider on her pillow. Remember when we was living at the-“

“Hey- _stop.”_

Vanjie sounds absolutely terrified, and Shangela can hear Silky shifting in her bunk, banging on her side of the door. Sighing, she unbuckles her seatbelt and follows the sound to the back.

“Sis, don’t worry about it. Everybody got roaches- they don’t bite and I’ll tell you what, we can trade bunks for the- “

Except, inside of Vanjie’s bunk, isn’t a dead roach or a tiny spider that Shangela could have easily flicked into her Solo cup, and thrown out the window.

There’s a full-sized man in there, a nightstick clutched to his chest, blue eyes wide and red, blonde curls sticking to his forehead. His shirt is soaked with so much sweat that Shangela can see his the definition of his chest, breaths heaving as he moves forward ever so slightly and she swears that she can hear Vanjie’s heart start to race.

His skin is too clear for him to be living on the streets, she thinks, but his facial hair has grown in enough that he must not be shaving, or maybe he prefers it that way, lips cracked and bleeding from where he’s picked at them with his teeth. But it’s the little leather shorts are a dead giveaway. She’s spent enough time in the alleys behind the club, to know the difference between a man looking to get his rocks off with his fists, and one who’s running as far away as they can from the places that try to keep them shut into a narrow, breathless box.

“ _Hey, my guy-_ “, she starts, reaching out a hand to grip the top of his nightstick, gently taking the baton from him. “How about we just…calm down a little bit, you know? How about we come out here and just try to sort this out?”

The man nods, too quickly to be calm at all, but she’ll take what they can get.

“ _Jose._ You go up there and tell good old _Justin_ to find the closest little Denny’s to here. We’re having an early, early breakfast today.

-

They end up parking the bus at a highway dump station instead, Silky spreading out a blanket on the hood so she and Vanjie can watch the sunrise burn overtop of the blacktop, ignoring the smell of sewage runoff with their noses firmly in each of their respective bags of marshmallows, while Shangela and Alyssa had taken whoever it was that they’d found in Vanjie’s bunk a little ways off, just in front of the guardrail.

Vanjie is still vibrating, out of pure fear and adrenaline, horrified by the idea that someone had been with them for the better part of a night, hiding in her bunk- and if he had wanted to kill them, the bus was filled with new clothes and fresh food, a full tank of gas and a long, empty stretch of highway that cut through only a few sparsely populated towns.

“Hey-“, Silky starts, fingers squeezing right around Vanjie’s shoulder. “You’re okay. It’s all gonna be good.”

“ _N-no-_ “

“If Mr Tall White and Busted wanna try any more shit, Alyssa got a Glock underneath the sink.”, Silky tells her, in a way that’s supposed to sound comforting.

“ _Someone has a gun on this bitch?_ ”, Vanjie screeches, nearly jumping from the hood of the bus.

“Shit, sis! She from Texas, of course she be packing!”

Vanjie pales. _If the man had gotten his hands on the gun-_

“Hey. Breathe, bitch. You’re gonna be okay. Last thing we need is you losing your shit over some dude who look like expired cream cheese.”

“ _He does not!_ ”, Vanjie snaps, her eyes sliding towards where Shangela and Alyssa are half-hiding, the tall shadow of the man’s backpack, his blonde curls moving with the sunlight as Vanjie forces herself to calm her breathing.

“See, don’t that feel better? When the air actually go all the way to your brain?”

Silky’s beefy arm reaches forward, her fingers brushing against Vanjie’s chest, just enough to make his heart leap as he flinches away, the sunrise burning through the desert horizon as hot as the blush that explodes across her cheeks.

“Don’t fucking- Jesus Christ.”, she can’t get herself together, not nearly quickly enough to hide the shame; of how she isn’t quite sure that feeling like _this,_ will ever stop.

Before Silky has anything to say, though, the rest of their little group is climbing up from the gaurdrail, and Vanjie’s mouth drops open. Alyssa and Shangela look thrilled. The man who could have killed them is smiling, his backpack hitched over his shoulder, looking so radiant that Vanjie wants to punch him right in the mouth.

She _won’t._

 _She_ can’t.

When Shangela explains everything, and tells them _Brock_ is a drag queen, too, on her way to Las Vegas- Vanjie curses under her breath.

“So was Buffalo Bill.”, she snaps.

“You know what, you ain’t wrong. But he too big to wear your skin suit anyway.”, Alyssa guffaws, slapping his ass as he climbs into the bus. “ _Besides, call it a woman's intuition, but I think you two are gonna get along._ "

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve deleted my Tumblr account due to just finding the site as a whole difficult for my mental health, especially in the pandemic. I appreciate every comment, and if you would like to get in touch/talk more, you can contact me via discord: walrusmaterial#4640 (This is an anon account- the display picture is Vanya from TUA!)


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